


Enough

by GrayJay



Series: Rex Racer on the Final Turn [5]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alex Summers - Freeform, Sara Grey - Freeform, Secrets, families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:23:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayJay/pseuds/GrayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right now, curled naked together on the too-narrow twin bed, he’s pretty sure there’s nothing he wouldn’t let Jean Grey do if she asked.</p><hr/><p>Some sex, but mostly Ikea furniture and uncomfortable secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone who requested more Jean. <3
> 
> While this story should stand reasonably well on its own--the only continuity that make much difference is pretty easy to pick out from context--it'll make the most sense between chapters [144](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2356574/chapters/5966795) and [145](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2356574/chapters/5966822) of [Rex Racer on the Final Turn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2356574/chapters/5200295), or slightly after X-Men #46.
> 
> Thanks (as always) to E.

“Mind if I smoke?” Jean asks. 

“Hm,” Scott says into her hair, as noncommittally as he can manage. The answer is _yes_ , but he’s not going to say it; because right now, curled naked together on the too-narrow twin bed, he’s pretty sure there’s nothing he wouldn’t let Jean Grey do if she asked.

Jean laughs. “It’s okay,” she says, and _right_ , she’s a telepath now, he still forgets sometimes. He’s kind of jealous of the literalness of her transformation--with the Professor dead, it feels wrong that he’s still the same person he was a month ago.

“Since when do you smoke?” he asks.

She shrugs, and her shoulder rubs back against his chest. “Since the Professor--” and then neither of them says anything for a few minutes. Her hair smells like something sharp and woody, maybe rosemary-- _rosemary for remembrance_ , he thinks, only he can’t remember what it’s from, something they read years ago in English class; but in his head, it’s in Professor Xavier’s voice, and he wraps his arm a little tighter around Jean’s waist.

“How are you doing?” she asks. “With everything?”

Scott weighs options, settles for at least some of the truth. “I don’t know. I’m trying to--” He can’t do this. “I’m worried about Bobby.”

“Bobby’s fine,” says Jean. “Bobby’s worried about _you_. They all are, actually. I’m supposed to report back.”

“What are you going to tell them?” He’s always assumed that when they talk about him it’s _boring_ or _difficult_. The idea that they _worry_ is--worrisome.

Jean twists around to face him. “That you’re going to be a famous radio journalist, and you’re dating a swimsuit model.”

Scott laughs. “I like that.” Then asks, before he can stop himself-- “Is that what this is? Dating? Are we, I mean?”

Jean goes serious. “I--we should talk about that, probably. I mean, do you want to be?”

He does, more than anything. “I--what do you want?”

She rests her head on his chest. “I want this. You. I mean, I’m not planning on seeing anyone else, for what it’s worth. I want--I want you to buy a dresser with more drawers than you need, so I can leave clothes here.”

“Okay,” says Scott. “I can do that.”

“What do you want?” Jean asks, again.

 _This_ , he thinks. _This. This. This_ , but because he can’t go this long without shooting himself in the foot, he says, “I don’t want you to do this because you--I don’t know. Because you feel like you have to rescue me, or fix me, or something.”

“Fuck you,” says Jean. She sits up, pulling the sheet with her.

“I’m sorry,” Scott says, and it’s so much of a reflex that he has to take a second to confirm that he really is. “That was--I’m sorry. I just--you could have something--someone--and I still don’t understand why you’d want to--why you’re here. With me.”

“Fuck you,” Jean says, again. “Do you really think I’m that-- _fuck you_.” She turns around, and oh, god, she’s crying, he’s made her cry. He sits up, too, wonders if he should touch her; instead, pulls his knees to his chest, presses his back to the wall.

“I’m sorry,” he says, even though he knows it isn’t enough, is never enough.

“Oh, god,” says Jean. “You really think--Scott, it’s--I don’t--” She wraps around him, presses her forehead against his. “I’m here because this is where I want to be. With you. And you’re right--I could have--but I want you, okay, Scott? _You_.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, again.

“I know,” she says. “But I’m not.” She rests her head against his knees, and they sit like that for a long time.

“I wish you had someone you could talk to,” she says, quietly.

“I talk to you,” he says, which is kind of true.

“Hm,” says Jean, and he can’t tell if she’s happy or skeptical, but either way, she leans up to kiss him, and maybe that’s enough.

* * *

It scares Jean how much she likes this: sitting in a sea of cardboard, tired and giddy, tightening the last bolts on the futon couch. Imagines for a second that it’s _theirs_ , and is briefly, intensely grateful that Scott can’t see her blush.

“This is really nice,” she says, aloud.

“It’s a little flimsy,” says Scott, and she starts to get indignant until she realizes he’s talking about the couch. “But I think it’ll hold up okay.”

“We could take it for a test run,” she says, because she can now, because they’re--well, it’s not like she’s _glad_ they’re gone from Salem Center, given what it means, but it’s good to get to be Scott and Jean for once, not just Cyclops and Marvel Girl.

It’s Scott’s turn to blush, and she can feel his sudden rush of arousal and discomfort, and something else she can’t quite place.

“C’mon, Cyclops, _rise to the challenge_ ,” she says with a grin, and he blushes even redder, but he’s laughing now, too.

Sex with Scott is at once the most natural and the most awkward thing in the world. In bed, he’s anxious, self-conscious, more comfortable touching than being touched; every time, for the first few minutes, she can feel him forcing himself not to lock up or pull away, his unease worrying at the edge of her consciousness. But his nervousness and lack of experience (and if she’s going to be honest, it’s not like she’s an expert either, but _one_ is still one more than _none_ ) are offset by attentiveness, and he moves with a deliberate grace that reminds her of the way he fights.

They mesh and move together in a way that Jean briefly, romantically chalks up to destiny; then realizes is in fact the product of years spent learning to read each other’s bodies, and that’s almost better: fighting skills delicately subverted into _this_ , a quiet _Fuck you_ to Charles Xavier and the secrets she’s carrying buried deep, deep, deep in the back of her head. When she laughs out of nowhere, Scott just smiles back and buries his face in her neck, and it’s enough to drag her back to the _here_ and now.

Afterwards, halting and tentative, he tells her about his brother. Clicks through his phone and shows her a photo of the two of them, arms around each other’s shoulders, and she’s not sure if she’s more nonplussed by the identical grins or the fact that one of them is Scott’s.

Scott talks about Alex, and Jean thinks about Sara, who only sort of looks like her. Jean and Sara are close, but it’s a different kind of close than Scott and Alex--because Jean is younger, but more because of the year she lost and what came out of it, the secrets Sara knows and Alex doesn’t. (Julia and Roger and Liam hardly even count, because they’re practically aunts and uncles, nearly grown up by the time Jean was born.) Thinks about Scott, and how little she actually knows about his life before the school, even now; that even though she knows him better than anyone, there’s a whole other Scott she never even suspected was hiding in the background, a Scott who smiles in photos and has a brother he talks about with a mix of wonder and worry that’s already breaking her heart by degrees.

Alex is twenty, Scott tells her. Alex grew up in Hawaii with adoptive parents he doesn’t talk to, and a sister Scott talks about like they’re friends. Alex is studying geophysics at Old Landon, something about gamma radiation and geomorphology--”way over my head,” says Scott, sounding prouder than she’s ever heard him--with Bruce Banner as a de facto advisor, which is a whole other sea of weirdness she’s not even prepared to consider. Alex doesn’t know about Cyclops, just that Scott has a job he can’t really talk about, one that involves being on call a lot. He thinks Scott wears the glasses for eye problems caused by brain damage from the plane crash, which is such a _Scott_ explanation--precisely accurate but still not quite _true_ \--that Jean can’t stop herself from laughing. 

“So when do I get to meet him?” she asks.

She can feel a flash of anxious surprise, and then Scott says, “Oh--” and then breaks off, like he hasn’t really thought about that part. It hits her again how warily he talks about Alex--about everything personal, when she stops to think about it; like he’s worried that if he extends too much of anything, someone will take it away.

“He’s your brother,” she says. “Of _course_ I want to meet him. We can trade embarrassing stories about you.”

Scott’s brow furrows, and he bites his lip. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. That would--that sounds nice. Not the embarrassing stories part. But--yeah.”

“We could get lunch in the city sometime,” she says.

“Okay,” says Scott. He pushes away some of the cardboard and stretches out on the floor with his head in her lap, and Jean strokes his hair and thinks again about how different it is here, in the tiny apartment in Westbridge. Thinks about how much she likes this: playing at being real people, the kind who build flimsy modular couches and have jobs and are effortlessly intimate in the ways they never quite seem to manage anywhere else; and wishes it could last.

 _Everything we love is built on secrets_ , Jean thinks: the things she wishes she could tell Scott, the things Scott wishes he could tell Alex. Imagines them all as pieces of some strange and monstrous whole, with detailed instructions for assembly, and maybe a tiny wrench included; and laughs in spite of herself, in spite of what’s sealed in the Salem Center subbasement and all the parts of Scott he’s never let her see and maybe never will.

Scott reaches up and runs long fingers along the edge of her cheek. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m glad we’re doing this.”

“Me, too,” she says, and leans down to kiss him; and maybe that’s enough.


End file.
